ultimate relations with the universe is the act of rebellion against the idea that such a God exists. Such rebellion essentially is that which in the chapter quoted a while ago Carlyle goes on to describe:
“ ‘Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped!… Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it!’ And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever….
“Thus had the Everlasting No pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my being, of my me; and then was it that my whole me stood up, in native God-created majesty, and recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction in life, may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: ‘Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine’; to which my whole Me now made answer: ‘I am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee!’ ” “From that hour,” Teufelsdröckh-Carlyle adds, “I began to be a man.”
And our poor friend, James Thomson, similarly writes:
